2wd fat bike and solar trailer. canning stock route.

somehow I seem to have convinced myself that doing the canning stock route on a solar bike is a good idea. the canning stock route is basically 2000km of sand dunes and corrogations threw the middle of nothing in western Australia. Basic plan is a 2wd fat bike whith a trailer of solar pannels.

the bike began life as as an ezee E rex, whith re built wheelsa second motor, 200rpm motors front and back and running on 14s rather then 10s as stock. front and rear pannier racks welded on.


its going to tow a fat trailer whith about 500w of solar pannels on it.

plan it to ride from sydney up to halls creek ( northen end of the canning) for a bit of a test run.

Sounds like an awesome adventure. How many hours per day of saddle time do you think you'll do on the Canning? I bet you'll miss the shade of your solar panels of your trike for the coastal trek around Australia.

Interested to see this progress. Epic adventure. Would love to do something similar one day. I reckon the trailer idea is a good one. Good luck.!

fryday afternoon finished a test run from east gippsland to sydney, bike now done just over 1000km. one flat tire, outherwise no breakages.woo.
for more updates and stuff , https://www.facebook.com/solarshift/

Hi, looks like great progress and testing is going well. do you think the bike and trailer is capable of tackling sandy hills on the CSR? Is the rig going to be to heavy to push if you cant get traction?

Id be interested to know the basic technical details of your setup, especially regarding the charging setup and how 500w of panels converts to all day riding available energy.

also is your trailer steel? how is the weight? did you consider aluminum? or too soft and weak for CSR punishment.
What made you decide 2 wheel drive is the best, better traction?

Best of luck. Very inspirational.

I hope it will be capable of handeling it., Ive done a few test runs on 4wd sandy tracks and up and down beaches and it did well. 159 ~6A solar cells in series, feeding into an mppt, whitch will charge a 14s ~ 50ah battery. this runs threw a couple of fairly samall controllers, run of a single throttle, two a pair of ezee motors, whith a current limit of ~20A a piece. running around 25km/h I can ueselly average around 15wh/km. on a resonably decent day of sun, tilting the pannel in the early morning and late afternoon I can get around 2.5-3 kwh ish.

yeah steel frame, its not the lightest, but much easier to work whith, stronger and easy to weld in the middle of no where. I dont actually know what it weaghs.

2wd gives me better traction, and lets me use reletivly light weaght, high torque ezee motors,without stressing them massively. it also results in a huge amount of torque. without having the complexity of a mid drive.

I have been following you on Facebook. Subscribed

I appear to have made it.

Well done mate.

Congratulations again Sam, great to see you make it and set some new "firsts" for the CSR.

You are a freaking champion! Only Australia would inspire someone to make these kinds of vehicles!

Well done Sam, been following your journey on Facebook. I look forward to some long distance touring one day. You set the bar pretty high!

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Incredible effort mate . It`s hard enough on a dirt bike or 4*4 .